Even the most insane, megalomanic despot will usually plan for a few months of war to conquer the whole world. Eight minutes is optimistic, to say the least. But that’s exactly what you’re going to do in Eight-Minute Empire: carve your name into the world, in mile high letter, in eight to twenty minutes. That’s shorter than your court-appointed painter will take to paint your regal countenance.

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Stefan Feld is at it again, exploring the possibilities to combine luck and strategy in one game. This time, his exploration takes him to Belgium, the city of Bruges to be precise, where you build canals, work on your political career and, most important of all, make influential friends. But even those friends will have a hard time helping you when dice and cards are not your friends.

Move to Italy, by a vineyard, grow wine, that’s not a plan that appeals to me. But put the same thing in a boardgame and suddenly I’m interested. Viticulture is a classic worker placement game about running a vineyard, from growing to selling wine, while giving tours and entertaining visitors on the side.

A train robbery can really ruin your day if you’re one of the passengers. Six bandits trying to rob your train at the same time, but working against each other? With a Marshal thrown in ot fend them off? That’s actually pretty hilarious to watch. And on the gorgeous 3D train of Colt Express, it’s even more fun. All of the chaos, in three dimensions.

Some might find a game where one player is literally Hitler offensive. I’m not one of them, and I’m glad, because that would keep me from a great hidden identity game that has tiny bit more structure than other games in that genre. At least for me it makes a huge difference.

Every year Fragor Games releases one game, designed by the Lamont brothers and produced with ridiculously pretty ceramic miniatures. Last year, that game was A Game of Gnomes. It’s what it says on the box: a game, and about gnomes. Except the title and some puns in the rule book, it has nothing to do with that other A Game of …. Something that everyone is talking about, but it has a lot to do with mushrooms. And it has the largest single component in any game we have here at the Meeple Cave.

Yet another easy, quick and very clever game: your only goal in Blokus is to place all your tiles on the board, and the only restriction is that they must touch your other tiles, but only by a corner. Oh, and three other people are trying to do the same and get in your way.

Games let you play different roles and do things that you wouldn’t do in real life. At least I assume most people playing necromancers in a fantasy RPG, for instance, don’t mess around with the dead in real life. I’ll also assume that most people playing Christope Boelinger’s Illegal don’t really deal with drugs or weapons. That’s the role you take in this adults only party game: that of a distasteful criminal trading his illegal goods for other goods.

In Kanagawa, all players are disciples of Master Painter Hokusai, trying to learn in his studio of art how to produce visual effects on canvas, capturing the mood of the different seasons as well as specific objects like trees, buildings, characters and animals. And while his wisdom is available to everyone, not every disciple can take away the same learning from the Master.